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Nature 418, 929-930 (29 August 2002) | doi:10.1038/418929a

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Cognitive neuroscience: The molecules of forgetfulness

Alcino J. Silva & Sheena A. Josselyn

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Not everything that we learn is useful, so the brain needs a mechanism to prevent itself being burdened by unhelpful details. The molecular details of this mechanism are now being uncovered.

Studies of the molecular and cellular foundations of cognitive processes have come of age with the development of techniques that allow genes to be over-expressed, deleted or modified in mice. These altered animals have been studied from a variety of aspects simultaneously by molecular biologists, neurophysiologists and psychologists.

  1. Alcino J. Silva and Sheena A. Josselyn are in the Departments of Neurobiology, Psychology and Psychiatry and the Brain Research Institute, 695 Charles Young Drive South, Gonda Building, University of California Los Angeles, California 90095-1761, USA.

Correspondence to: e-mail: Email: silvaa@mednet.ucla.edu